Wham! Life Hits Us.

 

“La de da da,” we come into this lifetime joyful, smiling, squirming bundles of possibilities. Oh, what fun. We will run and play and bask in the love of adoring parents. This is a vacation, playtime on earth—this beautiful planet with its colors and trees to climb and animals to play with, and…

 

Wham! Something hits us. What was that? I can’t go into the water because I can’t swim?

 

“Oh, okay, I’ll learn to swim.”

 

“La de da da. I’m a dolphin. Mom look at me. See how I glide through the water.”

 

“Mom, why are you crying?”

 

“What’s happening?”

 

“Daddy’s leaving? That can’t be. He’s supposed to stay here, live with us. You’re getting a what? A divorce? That can’t be, parents are supposed to live with each other. They are supposed to be here for me, for us, together.”

 

There are many others in the naked City, country, or hovel.

 

The point is we have created beliefs about how life is, but we go on building a life for ourselves. We go to school—well, that’s another story—the point is, though, that with those hits, we develop a view of how life is, and thus we develop a view of ourselves.

 

We see how people leave us, how we feel unloved, or how hard it was to maneuver the school playground, the lunchroom, the taunts or teasing. We might excel at interpersonal relationships, but there is usually something. We might think we are better than most—that’s an injury, too.

 

We have taken hits, and since they are emotionally charged, they impact us more than the gentle, happy ones. We were raised by parents who sustained hits of their own and, chances are, had no clue about raising kids. They had their own problems. However, together we muddled through. Maybe we had a best friend that filled in some of the holes in our psyche. Perhaps we had many friends, which further influenced our view of life.

 

The bottom line is that through all this, we developed beliefs.

 

I thought I had nothing to discuss today until I remembered yesterday’s email. A friend sent me a quote from Vincent Genna. It was, “Thoughts do not create, beliefs do.”

 

“Yes!” I yelled. “That’s the missing piece of the Law of Attraction puzzle.” We create through our beliefs, not from our thoughts. And most of those beliefs are held and exercised unconsciously.

 

Wow, this business of life is tricky.

 

But we’re adults now, and we can look back and throw those beliefs onto the wall to see if they stick. Are they true? Are they important to keep? Can we replace that belief with a more healthy, pertinent one? Perhaps they are absolutely not true. You did nothing to affect your parent’s personal problems. They were theirs, not yours. Maybe you can forgive them now.

 

I mentioned in a blog earlier that I was writing a memoir. Whenever I say it seems ostentatious to write one, think of it this way: I believe everybody should write one. Thus, my title Come On, I Dare You. Like, hey, don’t leave me alone in this. Every writer knows that a piece of writing affects the one writing it more than the one reading it.

 

From going over my life, I wonder now what my mother thought and felt when she discovered, at 16, that she was pregnant with me. I know she took her best friend with her when she went to tell my father. (I found out that later from her best friend.) She and my father got married and about four years later divorced, but that’s really all I know. She obviously felt she “Had to get married. It was shameful in those days to be an unwed mother. (Although it regularly occurred.) And she tried to hide it from me her entire life.

 

Once in the night, I heard her tell my stepdad, “I hope Joyce never finds out.” However, I knew. Kids know many things their parents try to keep from them. They also know that they shouldn’t know, so they stay quiet. I didn’t know, though, how much she suffered over finding that she was pregnant. And I don‘t know how much I shared her emotions since at the time, we were both sharing the same body.

 

That “trauma” could have contributed to some of my beliefs. 

Where Do You Want to Go?

 

“When I write something that really happened, people read it and say, ‘Sounds like bullshit.’When I pull something completely out of thin air, I hear, ‘Wow, that was so real.’”—Steven Pressfield.

 

 

 

Where does this leave us?

 

Write what’s real, or make it up?

 

But don’t lie and say it’s real if it’s not.

 

Pressfield’s point is, Write everything as though it is fiction, even if it’s true.

 

I’m trying to learn to write since, for some stupid reason, I feel compelled to do it.

 

I remember the day it began. Well, not the specific day, but the place. I had driven my two girls to school, a 45-minute drive from home. One daughter was in the first grade, the other in the third. Sometimes I didn’t want to drive right back home, and often I would stay away the entire day. It took 45 minutes to drive back home, do a little work, then drive 45 minutes back to pick them up. That’s when I started to write.

 

Bless their hearts, they gave me a profession. 

 

 As I sat on a hill above Fashion Valley in San Diego, California, having just ordered orange juice and coffee, I asked one of those pertinent life questions. I had graduated from college and had my children. Now they were in school. My question? What do I want to do with my life?  

 

“Well, I’d write if I had something to say.”

 

I wrote my first little children’s story that day. And I haven’t shut up since. I am not a verbose person, but I enjoy putting words on a page. 

 

Am I an illustrious writer? Nope. However, I have filled copious notebooks since. I didn’t know about blogging then—come to think of it, neither did anyone else. 

 

Some 40 years later, I had a book published. I remember reading that it takes 20 years to become a writer . I said I would do it, but I wanted a guarantee at the end of those years.

 

Life doesn’t come with guarantees, but I’ve had a damn good time with the process. This adventure has taken me to fascinating places. I studied and wrote about Cosmology—which is the origin of things. I told another writer what I was writing about, and he thought I said Cosmetology (About make-up and hair.) 

 

I studied metaphysics and came to some understanding about where I was regarding religion and such subjects. I wrote about Africa, and I made up stories. Then, somewhere in the midst of it all, I became involved with horses and self-published a book called, It’s Hard to Stay on A Horse While You’re Unconscious, that no one can manage to spit out the title. To my detriment, I was rebelling against the need for short titles. However, it was pertinent, and in Hawaii, Mrs. Chiropractor got it right off the bat. You can’t navigate life too well when you are unconscious. 

 

The unconscious part is both philosophical and literal. Sierra, my mustang, once knocked me in the nose, and I didn’t know what happened until I woke up on the ground. And there followed a week where I had racoon eyes.

 

I’m still trying to learn how to write. I still can’t keep my fingers on the correct keys, but so what. You plunge ahead, right?

 

So, Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones) was correct when she said, “Writing will take you where you want to go.”